"What we now have is an interest in local composting,"

This, alone, is what I voted for.

I appreciate the fact that we now have options for keeping some kind of composting on a small portion of the closed landfill site.

This is great news! As a gardening fan who has his own compost heaps but also uses the city compost, I'm all in favor of using our green waste locally and saving on truck emissions. On my small lot, I can grow many of the vegetables we eat, and share the extra with neighbors, friends, and food banks. And, there's a great sense of community when folks go to the dump to pick up the finished compost. It would be great to have that keep happening!

Didn't everyone believe they were voting to reduce GHG emissions? But, as we all learned in grade school science, decaying (composting) organic matter releases as much of the greenhouse gases H2O and CO2 into the atmosphere as burning it does.

What we really have now is our Public Works department's first "interim" use for the acreage that gullible PA voters added to its empire. Let's watch and see what this chain of "interim" uses will lead to. We can only be sure it won't lead to the promised anerobic digester, wet or dry.

can't it go somewhere else besides there

Please find the link to the timeline exhibit shared at Council.

Web Link

The timeline shows the relationship of local composting and the ultimate green energy production as well as closing down the incinerator. Composting is an anticipated part of the long-term green energy production from organics as the solids from any anaerobic process (where biogas is generated) require aerated composting to finish the degradation. As such, composting and anaerobic process are complimentary components of municipal organics management.

During the Measure E campaign precinct walkers and farmer's market greeters heard the requests for continued local composting, and with the affirmative vote that request can be fulfilled -- we have the land! We hope this means local drop-off as well as local compost pickup days.

Maintaining local composting as a first step is simple, conventional and cost effective. During the next 6 to 8 months there will be logistics to be worked, but this is a first modest step forward that secures an initial payoff of our initiative.

I'm pretty sure that hauling our yard waste/future compost to Gilroy creates more emissions than taking it to the end of Embarcadero Rd.

Curmudgeon--I like your member name, but I don't for a second agree with you that it's better to tote garden waste on big trucks to Gilroy, so it can decay there instead of here. H2O and CO2 are not equal to the waste from diesel or gasoline engines, even if they weren't going to be added to the air no matter where our yard waste goes. Add to that the fact that compost can help reduce the use of synthetic fertilizers, and you've got two convincing arguments for keeping the composting operation here in Palo Alto. There are other good arguments as well.

Let's keep the composting operation going here in Palo Alto!

"Curmudgeon--I like your member name, but I don't for a second agree with you that it's better to tote garden waste on big trucks to Gilroy, so it can decay there instead of here."

Thank you. At least we agree on my name.

We need to rethink how we deal with garden waste and sewer sludge. The regressive practice of putting back into the atmosphere the CO2 that plants sequestered from it cannot continue. That means we must stop doing composting and anerobic digestion (wet or dry).

And no, I do not mind if those people down there in Gilroy handle my garbage. You should try to get over that hangup yourself.

Stop composting? Stop composting? Stop creating beautiful soil out of garden waste, because you have some cockamamie theory that decomposing plants are worse than gasoline and diesel fumes emitted over 40 or 50 miles of highway? Not to mention that the same CO2 will be emitted there in Gilroy. I suppose you're happy that those Gilroy folks can handle your garbage and breathe the "noxious" fumes from decomposing garden waste, because they're not as enlightened as you are.

Or something.

I'm working on my hangups. Maybe you should work on your logic.

why not consider a regulatory taking of some of the vacant offices in the vicinity, trade land in the city for land around the plant

its crazy and misinformed to put a $$$$ dollar figure on the cities parkland